


here come the dreams

by starstrung



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Gore, Pining, Sharing Clothes, beau gets injured, jester draws beau, jester regenerates her arm, mural painting, staying at the lavish chateau
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:22:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22264807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starstrung/pseuds/starstrung
Summary: Beau knows that any kind of love of hers is going to be bloody-knuckled and ugly from the start. There’s no opening chorus for her, no silver bells, no fucking unicorns and sunshine. Beau sucks at relationships. She is one hundred percent sure that Jester’s idea of romance doesn’t include her.
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 37
Kudos: 500





	here come the dreams

Getting sprayed by acid makes for an ugly wound and an even uglier story. It smells like burnt chicken, it hurts a fuckton, and it melts _everything_ , even clothing, into a twisted, horrifying mess.

Beau is so out of her mind with pain and panic and adrenaline that she _snarls_ when they try to get close, to check on her. Jester doesn’t back off though, doesn’t even blink. She steps forward and kneels at Beau’s side and peels away the shreds of cloth.

“Don’t — don’t look at it,” Beau says. _She_ can barely look at it. It’s her _arm_. Except it doesn’t even look like an arm anymore. She closes her eyes tight and makes a small whimpering noise that fills her with shame. 

“I can fix this,” Jester is saying. There’s something in her voice, something new, and normally Beau would be all about cataloguing it, filing it away in the mental library she keeps on every single one of Jester’s mysteries, but just right now she’s doing her best not to scream, to clutch at her arm like an injured animal.

“I’m going to put you to sleep first, okay?” Jester says.

The words don’t register. And then when they do, she snaps her eyes open.

“ _No_ ,” she says, and sees Jester look taken aback by the vehemence in her voice. “Do _not_ take off my arm, Jester. I mean it.”

To Beau’s surprise, Jester smiles. “Don’t be silly, Beau,” she says, and takes Beau’s face in her hands. Beau is too shocked to even lean into the touch. “What would I do with an arm?” 

She leans in, and her lips brush across Beau’s forehead, and then Beau is asleep.

  
  
  


She wakes up in the Lavish Chateau.

Beau’s return to consciousness is slow, piece by piece. Her fuzzy vision is trying to focus on something on the wall. It comes to her — a crayon drawing of three mice chasing a cat. It’s definitely Jester’s work. Only she would think to give the mice pink dresses, and sharp looking swords.

She must be in Jester’s old room.

Beau sits up to get a better look at the drawing, and in doing so puts weight on her right arm. Suddenly it feels like her flesh is being torn off her bones.

There is a clatter behind the door when she cries out, and Jester comes rushing in.

“Beau, what are you doing, your arm isn’t _better_ yet!” Jester says, distressed. She looks as if she wants to jump onto the bed and shake Beau, like she does if she thinks Beau is being unreasonable.

“I didn’t do _anything_ ,” Beau says through gritted teeth. She’s afraid to move now — it still feels like her arm might come apart at the seams. She looks down at it, but the entire thing is wrapped tightly in white bandages.

“I’ve been healing it,” Jester says. “I can only regenerate it a little every day. Don’t fuck it up, it’s a super powerful spell, you know.”

“I’m not going to fuck it up,” Beau says heatedly, and then she stops. “Wait, where’s everyone else? They’re okay? They made it out okay?”

“Oh yeah, that was like ages and ages ago, Beau,” Jester says, rolling her eyes. She finally seems to come to the decision that Beau won’t break, and climbs into the bed to sit next to Beau, rearranging her skirts. Her hip leans gently against Beau’s uninjured side, and that little knot of panic in Beau’s throat loosens.

“They’re out doing a job for some money because we’re kind of broke,” Jester explains, “but they’ll be back in a few days I think. I’ve been sending them messages to check.”

“Days?” she says, in surprise. “How long have I been out?”

“Three whole days, Beau, I’ve been so bored,” Jester says, groaning. “I mean it’s been so, so nice to spend time with my mom, of course, but you know, I was really worried about you.” She says this last part down at her hands, twisting together in her lap.

Beau reaches with her good arm and puts her hand on Jester’s. “Thanks for taking care of me, Jes,” she says. 

Jester beams at her. “Don’t mention it,” she says breezily, like she hasn’t even given it a second thought until now.

Beau knows better: Jester has always cared more about these things than she lets on.

“Now, since you’re awake, I might as well regenerate what I can today,” Jester says, and goes to unwrap Beau’s arm. Beau pulls away.

“Do you have to unwrap it to regenerate it? Can’t you do it through the bandages?” Beau doesn’t want to see the mangled mess of her arm. She doesn’t want to believe that it belongs to her.

“It won’t work properly otherwise,” Jester says. “Plus, maybe your bandages will, like, fuse to your arm. Wouldn’t that be _gross_?”

“Okay,” Beau says, and because she trusts her, she lets Jester unwind the bandages, a lump in her throat.

When Beau sees what’s beneath the bandages, she lets out a strangled, involuntary cry. It’s not as bad as she thought it would be, probably due to Jester’s healing, but it still barely looks like an _arm_.

“I’m sorry, Beau,” Jester says, her voice quiet and gentle. “But it will get better, you just have to give it time. I promise.” She lays her hands on the broken, raw flesh, and Beau barely _feels_ it.

“Are you ready?” Jester asks.

“Do it,” Beau says, and grits her teeth.

She doesn’t scream, but it’s a close thing. The flesh of her arm begins to knit together, slowly, slowly, just the piece of her where Jester’s hands are. When it’s done, Beau has broken out all over in a sweat, and she’s shaking. She hates it, wishes that she were alone right now so that she could curl up tight and not let anyone see. 

She doesn’t want to show Jester this weakness. She doesn’t want Jester to be disgusted.

But Jester doesn’t say anything. All she does is wind a clean bandage tightly around Beau’s healing arm. Beau watches her face, instead of looking down at her arm. 

Beau is used to looking at Jester’s face when she’s telling a story, when her entire face gets animated, lit up. Beau will look at Jester’s eyes, or her scrunched-up nose, or, if she knows she won’t get caught, at Jester’s lips. She does this now. It takes her mind off the pain, until finally she manages to stop gasping for breath.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Jester says, sounding cheerful, but there’s just the smallest tremor in her hand when she smooths Beau’s hair back from where it sticks to her forehead.

Beau is slipping into unconsciousness, too weak to hold herself up anymore. She slumps forward a little, and Jester gladly hugs her.

“You’ll get better. You’re getting better,” Jester tells her, stroking the back of Beau’s head. And then, in a small, sad voice, “I’m doing my best.”

Oh, Beau thinks, because of course Jester would come up with the idea that she’s not doing a good enough job here. She opens her mouth to tell Jester that she shouldn’t feel bad, but everything gets heavy, and dark.

She sleeps.

  
  
  


Jester isn’t there when Beau wakes up. The light is dim, but she can’t tell if it’s evening or early morning. She has no idea how long she’s slept, and the disorientation makes her heart beat a little faster in panic.

“Jester?” she calls, hating how small her voice sounds, like a scared fucking kid.

There’s no response.

She pulls herself out of bed, gritting her teeth through the twinges of pain. It’s only then Beau notices the nest of blankets and pillows arranged on the floor next to her bed. Jester’s sketchbook is there too, among the blankets. Beau’s heart constricts a little at the thought of Jester curled up next to her on the floor, keeping an eye on her, keeping her within arm’s length.

Beau idly flips open the sketchbook to the last page. And then she wishes she hadn’t. 

The page is filled with sketches of Beau — of her sleeping face, of a wrinkle on her brow as she dreams, of the crook of her elbow against the bedsheets. Beau stares at it for a long time. It’s not like she’s an expert in art or anything. She’s pretty sure that there isn’t an artistic bone in her body. (Not unless you count martial arts, which are technically arts. It _is_ in the name.) Still, Beau likes _looking_ at art, and she really likes looking at Jester’s art, specifically. 

There’s something about the way Jester’s drawn the shadows across Beau’s face that feels weirdly _intimate_.

And written in the bottom in a hasty scrawl: “Please help me heal her.”

Beau closes the sketchbook. Her face feels weirdly hot. It’s nothing, she thinks. It’s in her head. Jester’s been locked up in here with her this entire time, of course she’s had nothing else to draw. It doesn’t _mean_ anything.

Leaving the sketchbook behind, Beau opens the door to the room and peeks out into the hallway. The inn is quiet. She closes the door behind her as quietly as she can, and begins to creep down the hallway. When she rounds a corner, she walks straight into Bluud, the minotaur.

“Fucking fuck!” she hisses. Fuck, jumping is _not_ a good idea right now. Her arm is screaming, and for half of a second her vision goes a little blurry.

“Good morning, Beauregard,” Bluud says, unperturbed. “Should you be out of bed?”

“Too late for that now,” Beau says briskly. “Listen, do you know where Jester is?”

There is a pause, and for a moment Beau thinks he’s not going to tell her. “Kitchen,” Bluud says, finally.

“Not much of a talker, I like that,” Beau says, and fucks off before he can stop her.

The kitchens aren’t hard to find. Beau goes to the ground floor of the Lavish Chateau and then just follows her nose, which is always a safe bet. It’s empty. Everything has been put away and cleaned up. Beau spots a human girl sitting in the corner. She has her legs drawn up on the chair, a steaming mug held to her chest.

“Hey,” Beau says, going over to her.

The girl looks up, and her face brightens. She bounces to her feet and goes to Beau immediately, grinning.

It takes Beau only a second to recognize that expression. “Wait, Jester. It’s Jester, right?” she says.

“Of course it is,” Jester says, twirling a little. She’s got copper hair this time, with freckles. Her eyes are the same shape and color though. She stops twirling, and frowns.

“Wait, should you be up? How are you feeling?” Jester asks.

“Much better,” Beau says, which is the truth. She feels a lot less weak, even though her arm is still being fucking annoying.

“I should have been there when you woke up, I’m sorry,” Jester says. “I just really wanted some hot chocolate, you know? Do you want me to make you some?”

“Actually,” Beau says, “I’m pretty fucking hungry.”

“Oh!” Jester says. “Of course you are. Here, sit down while I find you some food, okay?”

Beau takes the chair gratefully, and watches Jester peek through the pantry to find her some food. There are leftover pastries, half a chicken, some congealed oatmeal, and an entire bunch of bananas. Beau doesn’t care — she eats all of it in huge inhaling bites while Jester sips at her hot chocolate.

“Do you want to see the garden?” Jester says excitedly, after she’s finished. 

“Oh,” Beau says, a little thrown by this. “Sure. I didn’t know you guys had a garden.”

“I just realized I’ve never shown it to you! It’s really nice, and everything is in bloom this time of the year. I’ll show Caduceus when he comes back, and maybe he can help Mama with the roses. She says the roses are always in need of help.” Jester says this last part a little conspiratorially, like she’s letting Beau in on a secret. Beau nods along, always easily enchanted by Jester.

Jester’s face falls. “Unless you’re very tired? You’re still healing. Maybe you want to go straight back to bed? We can do that too.”

Beau looks at Jester. She _is_ pretty tired. But more than that, she doesn’t want to leave Jester alone again.

“I’m fine. I want to see this garden,” she says, and stands up, very careful not to sway too noticeably. Jester, always adept at knowing when Beau is putting on a strong front, doesn’t hesitate to take Beau’s arm, supporting her weight. 

Beau’s mind, traitorous to a fault, notes with exacting precision just how well Jester fits against her side, how soft she is, the smell of her hair. They walk to the garden, which is really a courtyard at the center of the Lavish Chateau where laundry has been hung out to dry across the different balconies. Flowers bloom in the plot below, and Beau breathes in the smell of lavender and chamomile, sage and mint.

“What do you think? Mama helps tend to it herself,” Jester says. “She says she’s thinking of keeping some bees after I gave her that honey.”

Beau’s never really thought much of flowers. They’re nice, she guesses. Once, as a child, she chased a frog through her mother’s flower garden, tearing up her new frock and uprooting an entire swathe of freshly planted petunias. For this, she was locked in her room for a month.

By the end of that month she had grown tall enough to climb out of her window and escape out the back. Her father had a difficult time keeping her under control after that.

Jester probably never had to climb out of windows to escape, never got punished for making a mess. Although, Beau thinks, Jester was locked up for much longer than Beau was.

“It’s really pretty,” Beau says. The blue ones are her favorite.

Beau sits on a bench and watches Jester narrate the garden for her. Here was the corner where she invented a kingdom of tiny people, who made her their ruler. Here was the rock where an old lizard named Peanut used to sunbathe in the afternoon. Here was the tree where Bluud had helped her set up a hammock, where she’d spent hours and hours sketching until a bad rainstorm came to wash it away.

An entire life lived in this place. It seems like much too small a space to have raised _Jester_ , whose presence constantly staggers Beau with its expansiveness, its sheer fucking magnitude. Here, Jester created worlds larger than all of the Menagerie Coast to keep her company. 

Not for the first time, Beau wonders what the inside of Jester’s head is like.

“It’s getting late,” Jester says, and comes to stand in front of Beau, the late morning sunlight framing her from behind. Beau misses Jester’s real face. “The Chateau will be opening for business soon.”

“Does that mean we have to leave?” Beau asks her, a little reluctantly. The warmth from the sunlight is turning her bones into liquid. She could easily take a nap right here.

“We’ll get in the way,” Jester says gently, and she takes Beau’s good arm in her strong grip and gets her to her feet. 

This time, instead of going through the main hall, which is already filling with clientele, they take the servants’ stairs up to Jester’s room, a narrow, steep stone staircase that Beau struggles to climb. She has to lean heavily against Jester at the end, ashamed of her wheezing breath, the way her limbs are all shaking.

“I think it’s time for another healing session,” Jester says, as they come back to her room.

“Already?” Beau says. “I’m just going to fall asleep again.” She sits down heavily on Jester’s bed.

And then, as if Jester knows exactly what’s bothering Beau, she says, “I’ll be here when you wake up again, I promise.”

Shit. “That’s not — you don’t have to — if you have other things to do, then—”.

“I won’t. When you wake up, you and I can go hear Mama sing.” There’s something about that note of adoration in Jester’s voice that never fails to stun Beau. How different would she be if she’d adored her parents half that much?

Beau smiles a little. “I’d like that. And hey, you don’t need to sleep on the floor, you know.”

Jester frowns. “But I always sleep on your right side, and that’s the side of you that’s injured. What if I roll over, and, like, go right onto your injured arm, and then you started bleeding? I’d mess up all my good work.”

Jester does like to spread out in her sleep. Meanwhile, Beau, trained to sleep on monk beds as narrow as a plank of wood, sleeps curled up into herself as tightly as possible. “You can sleep on my left side, Jes,” Beau tells her.

Jester only deliberates on this for a second, before agreeing. She moves her blankets back onto the bed. Beau notices that she tucks the sketchbook out of view. She pretends not to see.

Jester sits up on the bed next to her, eyes gone serious, like she wants Beau to trust her. Beau trusted her already, but she appreciates this effort. “Are you ready?” Jester asks.

Beau grits her teeth. “Just do it. Maybe it’ll hurt less this time.”

“Maybe.” Jester takes off the bandages. This time, preparing for it, Beau closes her eyes and goes into a meditation, sending her focus as interiorly as possible, until all she can hear in her head are waves crashing upon a coastline. Her body feels a thousand miles away.

Distantly, Beau hears Jester say the words of her healing spell. For a long, suspended moment, nothing happens.

Then, all at once, her peace shatters. The pain comes like a huge towering wave to cast her down.

  
  
  


This time, Beau wakes up with Jester’s hair in her mouth and her tail wrapped around her knee. She spends those first five minutes of consciousness painstakingly going through her mental list of reasons why she Absolutely Can’t Tell Jester Her Feelings.

Because, the thing is, Beau is in love with Jester.

She tries to be as unflinching and ruthless with her own truths just as much as she is with everyone else’s, and so this is what she knows: Beau is in love with her best friend, her roommate, her traveling companion.

She can never tell her.

Jester thinks love is birdsong and meeting one another in meadows. Jester speaks of romance with stars in her eyes, like it’s a legend that she heard growing up and carried with her ever since. 

Beau knows that any kind of love of hers is going to be bloody-knuckled and ugly from the start. There’s no opening chorus for her, no silver bells, no fucking unicorns and sunshine. Beau sucks at relationships. She is one hundred percent sure that Jester’s idea of romance doesn’t include her.

Jester’s tail curls just that much tighter around Beau’s knee, the tip of it now inching up her thigh, and Beau lets out a long, desperate exhale, every inch of her locked up tight. The monks taught her how to be unmoving, still, and Beau finds herself falling into that form now, as if in defense.

“Jester,” she says softly.

“Mmm?” Jester says, muffled into the pillow, which is also Beau’s pillow. They are so close that Beau can feel Jester’s eyelashes whispering against her neck. She tries very hard not to shiver.

“Isn’t it time to wake up?” Beau says.

She probably imagines Jester’s tail tightening briefly around her leg before uncoiling. Jester rolls over onto her back, thankfully giving Beau enough room to gape silently up at the ceiling. 

“Man, is it weird that I’m really craving one of Caduceus’s stews right now?” Jester says, words slurring together.

Beau is pretty used to these conversations with a half-asleep Jester. She’s found that the best route forward is just to humor her until she wakes up fully. “Yeah, that’s pretty weird,” Beau says, seriously. “Caduceus uses so much turnip.”

“Oh my _gosh_ , so much turnip,” Jester says. “Where does he find all those turnips.” She sounds like she’s falling back asleep.

Beau props herself up, careful not to rest weight on her tender arm, and looks down at Jester. She can’t help but smile. Her disguise wore off as they slept, and her blue hair is twisted all across her blue face. 

Jester’s eyes open and she sits up suddenly. Beau has to dodge out of the way so that their foreheads don’t collide.

“Oh! What am I doing, Mama’s performance is _tonight_ ,” she says. “Come on, get up, Beau, we have to go see it.”

“That’s what I was — okay, just give me a — all right, calm down.” Beau says, as Jester hurries her out of bed.

“Don’t you need to put your disguise back on?” Beau asks her.

Jester smiles at her, that smile of hers that always promises mischief, and never fails to make the back of Beau’s neck sweat. “Don’t worry, we won’t be seen.”

They slip out of the room. The upper floor is empty, but below, Beau can see a crowd gathered in the main hall, preparing for the performance. It’s a pretty upscale crowd, dressed fancy for a night out. They’re all here to hear the Ruby of the Sea sing.

Jester takes her down the servants’ staircase again, and then leads her to a narrow hallway by the kitchens. Here, she opens a small, unassuming door, and gestures with a flourish for Beau to enter.

“It’s a closet?” Beau says, confused.

“You’ll see.” Jester wiggles her eyebrows up and down, bouncing a little on the balls of her feet. Of Jester’s many expressions, Beau recognizes this one to mean that Jester has something very impressive to show Beau. This could mean anything from a badass new spell to a bunch of rocks cleverly arranged to look like a dick.

Beau ducks into the small doorway. It’s about the size of a closet, but the far wall is entirely made of stained glass. Light and sound filter in, and Beau realizes that they must be right over the main hall right now.

Jester squeezes past her and sits comfortably on the thick rug that has been laid there. Beau sits down next to her. 

“This is where you listened to your mom sing, huh?” Beau asks.

“Yes, she had it made for me, isn’t it nice?” Jester says. 

It seems lonely, Beau thinks. But she doesn’t say this. Jester, out of everyone she has ever met, knows loneliness pretty well. She made friends, after all, with the god that kept her company through it. 

“It’s pretty fucking cool,” Beau says, which it is. Through the stained glass, they can see the assembled crowd, and they have a good view of the stage. “This would be a good place to eavesdrop on conversations.”

“Oh, I forgot, you’re all _Expositor-y_ now,” Jester says, teasing. “Are you going to go into, like, spy mode now? Maybe we should have brought your notebook.”

Beau makes a face. “No, I’m not going to — listen, that was _one time_ , and only because I thought the violinist was in a crime syndicate.”

And in the dim, colored light, Beau sees Jester’s expression change for just a moment. It goes from teasing to something altogether too soft, a sort of seriousness in her eyes that Beau rarely sees, but pays attention to when she does.

It’s gone before Beau can note it. Jester laughs, muffling it behind a hand so that they aren’t heard.

The lights outside dim. The conversation immediately quiets down.

Jester gasps quietly, and her hand goes to Beau’s arm (her left, thankfully). “It’s starting!” she says.

Jester’s mom comes on stage. It’s impossible to see every detail through the glass, but Beau can make out the glittering gown that Marion is wearing, her hair done up in an elegant twist, her long neck adorned with a simple pendant that hangs at the hollow of her throat. When Jester’s mom walks into a room she makes it briefly hard to breathe.

“Isn’t she beautiful,” Jester sighs. Her hand is still on Beau’s arm, and she leans her head to rest against Beau’s shoulder, tucked beneath her chin. Beau finds her breath catching in her throat again, but she’s forgotten all about Jester’s mom, her attention caught on peering over at the top of Jester’s head, nestled over her shoulder.

“Yeah, she is,” Beau says, too late, her voice rough, but Jester doesn’t seem to notice. By then, the music has already started.

  
  
  


By the time they go back up to Jester’s room, Beau is so tired that the steps of the stairs keep going out of focus one at a time, so she has to keep a hand on the wall to steady herself. She stumbles into the room and collapses onto the bed gratefully.

“Are you really going to sleep in those clothes?” Jester asks, making a face. “I have a nightgown you could wear. You’ve been wearing those same clothes for, like, a week. I think we should really wash them.”

Beau looks tiredly at herself. She’s pretty sure her clothes still have blood on them, but then they usually do have blood on them. “Hey, normally, I’d love to change. But I think if I tried to move right now, my legs would melt off too.” Beau is half aware that this logic would not make sense if she were more awake. At the moment, though, it seems pretty fucking reasonable.

Jester, for some reason, doesn’t seem to be getting it. “It’s okay, I can help you. Sit up, Beau.” She says this with such determination that Beau does what she says at once.

It’s only after Jester has already carefully guided Beau’s arms out of her shirt and is helping to pull it off over her head that she realizes she’s _being undressed_.

“Uh,” Beau says, certain that she should put a stop to this, but by then, Jester has already somehow negotiated Beau into standing up so that she can take off her pants. Her mind slows down to an unresponsive crawl when she sees Jester very confidently untying the rope belt that loops around her waist.

“You don’t have to do that. Okay, I mean, I guess you... already did that,” Beau says uselessly, finding herself standing at the foot of the bed in nothing but her underwear while Jester bundles away her clothes.

“You’re not very good at defending yourself right now, are you,” Jester says with a smile, and before Beau can defend herself against _this_ , she slips the nightgown over Beau’s head, briefly trapping her in white cloth. Very carefully, Jester helps Beau pull her injured arm through the arms of the gown. It’s sleeveless, which is useful for Beau’s injury. It also doesn’t have a crazy amount of lace or frills, which is useful for salvaging whatever small dregs remain of Beau’s dignity. 

“Yeah, I’ll be honest, I have no idea what just happened,” Beau says, and since Jester appears to be done with her for the moment, she sits back down on the bed just to be safe.

Jester, for her part, looks very pleased with herself. “Don’t you feel much better now?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Beau says, still dazed. The nightgown is too short for her, barely reaching over her knees. It doesn’t have any blood on it. It’s clean and pressed and it smells like Jester, a bit.

Beau’s one remaining brain cell feels like it’s rattling around in her skull, trying to get out. Jester took off her clothes. Beau’s wearing her nightgown. Beau can remember the feeling of Jester’s fingers sliding across her bare collarbone. She remembers it again, now, and shivers violently.

Jester incorrectly assumes that Beau is cold, and bullies Beau into going under the covers. Jester, Beau is beginning to realize, is an absolute terror when it comes to being a caretaker.

“I’m going to go find Mama and tell her what an amazing job she just did,” Jester says, pressing her hands together excitedly. “You stay right there, okay Beau? Go to sleep.”

She leaves Beau alone in the room. Beau burrows under the covers and tries, very desperately, not to think about the feeling of Jester’s hands across her skin, sliding up her ribs, what they would feel like stroking up her neck, tangling in her hair. She feels flushed; she presses her thighs together just to feel the course of heat and then feels guilty about it, thinking about Jester coming back, of sleeping next to her.

 _I’m not strong enough for this_ , Beau thinks miserably, curling into herself. It would be fine if she could trust her own judgment, if she could tell herself that it was okay to be in love with Jester. But then, that would be making it too easy, wouldn’t it, if she already had the answers. 

In the end, it’s a good thing that her body is so tired. She’s fast asleep when Jester comes back.

  
  
  


The next few days pass like this. With Jester’s help, Beau heals slowly, the pain of each healing session so severe that Beau’s attempts to meditate through them fail. Beau gets used to seeing Jester’s eyes filling with tears before passing out like a baby. Neither of them ever mention it when she wakes up.

They don’t see Marion that much. She’s busy with an important client, according to Jester.

Jester and Beau stay holed up in their own hidden part of the Lavish Chateau, only going out in the mornings when the inn is closed for business. Eventually, Beau begins to feel like a trapped animal. But for those first days, her stamina failing without any warning, her arm randomly flaring up in searing pain, the limits of the Chateau are more than enough. 

Once Beau is strong enough, Jester takes her up to the roof.

There’s no staircase that goes up directly, so they go to the uppermost attic and climb out the window. This is especially precarious since Jester insists on bringing an entire box of her paints.

“Why can’t we just put it into your haversack and take it up that way?” Beau asks.

“I gave the haversack to Caleb so they could use it if they needed it.” Jester frowns, clearly regretting this choice. “How about I go first with the paints, and then I can help you up,” she says, uncertainly.

Beau leans out the window, judging how far the distance is. She’s done far longer climbs. Not with her dominant arm out of commission, of course, but there’s a first time for everything.

“I can climb up with one arm,” Beau says, with a confidence that’s only half for show. “Then you can pass up the paints.”

And then, because Jester’s still busy arranging her paints into her box, Beau decides to take initiative. She swings out of the window and reaches for the ledge. She almost reaches with her right arm, remembering only at the last minute to use her left. For a moment, she worries that she’s misjudged the distance. She hears Jester’s yell of surprise.

Her monk training kicks in. Her grip holds true. She uses her momentum to swing a leg over the edge of the roof and lift herself up.

“Easy!” Beau calls down, careful not to sound winded. “Now pass me the paints.”

Jester does not pass her the paints. She’s strapped the box to her back with a belt of leather and she climbs up to the roof. Beau offers her a hand up, but Jester doesn’t take it.

As soon as she straightens up, Beau can see that Jester is _angry_.

“ _Beauregard_ ,” Jester says sharply, in the kind of way that sort of snaps at the base of Beau’s spine and rings in her ears like a really good punch to the head. She takes an involuntary step backwards, and Jester advances on her. “Do you _know_ how powerful a spell I’ve been using to regenerate your arm? Do you know how hard it is to grow back someone’s _arm_ after it’s been, like, _basically melted_?”

Beau shakes her head, too stunned to speak. She’s never seen Jester this mad at something that wasn’t an enemy. The air around them grows cold enough that she can see her own breath.

“I had to pray to the Traveler for an _entire night_ so that he could teach me the spell,” Jester says, her eyes flashing through the tears that are gathering there, so that Beau feels like the world’s hugest asshole. “Caleb said the level of transmutation magic I’m using is strong enough to send people through planes. I don’t even _know what that means_ , Beau.”

“I think he just meant — okay, no, shutting up,” Beau says hastily, because Jester’s eyes immediately narrow when she begins to speak.

“I know it hurts you every time I use it,” Jester says, and here her voice begins to falter. “I hate that. But it’s the only way I know. I want you to be able to punch things again and I want you to get better and I want us to—”. Here, Jester breaks off with a small gasp, her face crumpling together in an awful, terrible way. Unable to bear it, Beau steps forward and hugs Jester tightly with her one arm. Jester hugs her back, sniffling a little into Beau’s vest.

“Don’t ruin it, okay?” Jester says quietly. “You could have ruined it.”

“I won’t,” Beau says, as fervently as she can, because hearing Jester _care_ about this so much, about whether or not Beau is _okay_ , feels like being shot through with shrapnel. Beau’s never given much thought to her body — she’s pushed it to its limits and then pushed those limits back further and then done it all over again. She’s not used to thinking about it as something more than a tool to be sharpened.

“I’ve seen you pull a muscle while trying to impress Yasha with your weight lifting. I pretended not to notice, but it was actually pretty obvious. Also, it was really stupid,” Jester says, her voice still sounding broken and miserable. “You can be really stupid sometimes, Beau.”

“Yeah, okay, that’s fair,” Beau says.

“But, like, capable too. Most of the time you’re really smart,” Jester adds hastily, like she’s worried she hurt Beau’s feelings.

Beau smiles. She pulls away so she can look into Jester’s face. Jester smiles back up at her, a little tearfully. “Thanks for keeping me in one piece,” she says. “I know I don’t, uh, make it easy. I’m a pretty shitty patient.”

“I mean practice usually makes perfect, but I think, maybe, in this case, you shouldn’t practice. That would be not good,” Jester says. She begins to look a little sheepish. “Sorry I, um, got so mad at you. Wow, I was really mad.” She laughs a little, as if in disbelief.

“Yeah, uh, that was, uh, surprising,” Beau says. “I mean you did tell me that you got mad like that sometimes.”

“I did,” Jester says, nodding. “And you told me that you’d be proud of me when I did! I guess maybe it’s different than how we both thought it would go since I was being mad _at_ you instead of _with_ you.”

“No, that’s, uh, I’m still proud of you,” Beau says. The rage in Jester’s eyes when she was telling Beau off isn’t something she’s likely to forget any time soon. She’s just not sure if _pride_ truly sums up the… mixture of emotions she’s having about it. It was, if she’s being totally honest, kinda hot. “After all, it’s not like I didn’t deserve it,” she adds quickly.

“You did deserve it,” Jester agrees. “But since we’re up here anyway, we might as well paint.”

And for the first time, Beau has time to take in the view, and her mouth falls open. “Holy shit,” Beau says.

The Lavish Chateau sits on an incline, and so they can see the entire district sprawling out below them. From this vantage point, Beau can count each of the opal archways, their inset gemstones glittering in the sun. Past them, she can see the distant docks, ships coming in an out of harbor.

“Oh yeah, this view is pretty spectacular, huh?” Jester says offhandedly. “You can see all of Nicodranas from here basically.”

“Yeah, it — yeah,” Beau says, taking it in. She had forgotten, sort of, staying inside the Chateau, that Nicodranas was this glittering, this bright.

“Okay, enough sightseeing Beau, come on,” Jester says, and impatiently yanks at Beau’s vest to pull her away.

They walk around to the other side of the roof, and here against the slanted roof, Jester has painted a mural. Beau’s head spins looking down at it, and she involuntarily reaches out to hold Jester’s arm as she studies it. Spiraling designs of huge rainbow scaled fish chasing each other’s tails, a mermaid with long trailing hair, ribbons of bright green eels breaking through white foam waves.

“Jester, it’s beautiful,” Beau says, her voice hushed.

“Oh,” Jester says, and when Beau turns to look at her, she looks uncharacteristically shy. “Do you really think so?”

She takes Jester’s face in her hand. She would have used both if she’d had them, but Beau has to work with what she’s got. 

“I really do, Jester,” Beau says. “You painted the entire fucking ocean on this rooftop.”

Jester’s eyes went very wide when Beau touched her, and now they light up with happiness. She takes Beau’s hand in hers and squeezes it.

“Well, not the entire thing. I started it months before I left, but I never got to finish it,” Jester says, pointing, and now Beau sees the edges, the gaps that still have to be filled in. 

“I painted this before I actually ever went to the ocean,” Jester says, almost to herself, looking down. “I guess it’s different from what I painted. There’s a lot more cursed things in the ocean, and water ghosts, and balls that go in your stomach, and pirates.” Jester counts all of these things off on her fingers. 

“I don’t have a single pirate on here,” she says. “Maybe I should add one.” Jester makes a face, like she’s not really too happy about that. None of them really have fond memories of their short stint at being pirates.

“We did meet an unusual amount of pirates, to be fair,” Beau says. “I think when most people go on the ocean they don’t normally meet that many pirates. Unless you’re friends with Fjord.”

Jester considers this and seems to find Beau’s logic sound, because she brightens. “That’s true. Okay, I won’t paint any pirates.”

Beau realizes, looking around, that the mural is completely out of view from any of the surrounding buildings. There are no windows that face it, or taller buildings nearby where one might see the mural from the roof. Jester’s ocean is hidden. 

She wonders if she’s the first person to have ever seen it, apart from Jester. She thinks about Jester growing up daydreaming about seeing the ocean, never able to talk to anyone about it. So she painted it herself.

“Hey, thanks for showing this to me,” Beau says. 

“Of course, Beau,” Jester says, and finally lets go of her hand.

Beau offers to help get Jester all set up, but Jester very quickly chases her away, so instead she sits cross-legged on the tallest part of the roof and meditates. Her concentration lasts for about an hour, and then she just takes in the view, watches the city life unfold below them, watches as Jester paints a beautiful ship, with what looks like a tortle at the helm.

She closes her eyes again to meditate, and when she opens them again, the sun is setting.

“Time to go?” Beau asks Jester. There’s a smear of white paint across her right cheek, and paint on her clothes. Beau wants to look at her forever.

“Not yet,” Jester says.

They stay on the roof until nightfall and watch the stars come out.

  
  
  


Jester and Beau only leave the Chateau once, when Beau is so restless she starts feeling like a caged animal. 

Her arm is healing well, giving her less and less trouble, and she no longer has to keep her hand and wrist bandaged. Her stamina is also a lot better and she no longer gets exhausted in the middle of the day, like a baby. This also means that she quickly gets sick of walking the same hallway, of sneaking around like ghosts in the Chateau. They only get fresh air in a few stolen moments in the garden or up on the roof.

“I don’t know how you did this for so long, Jester,” Beau says, after a close encounter where a client had come upstairs unannounced and they’d had to hurry back to Jester’s room to avoid being seen.

“It’s okay if _you_ go out there, you know,” Jester says. “I just need to put on a disguise, and then I could too.”

“That’s not as fun, though,” Beau says. “What if we — just leave? For a bit? Get a drink or something.” She belatedly remembers that Jester doesn’t drink. “Or, I don’t know, do whatever it is people do in Nicodranas at night.”

Jester waggles her eyebrows suggestively at Beau and makes a gesture with her hands, and Beau snorts.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Beau says, even though now she can’t stop _thinking_ about it.

“Okay,” Jester says, uncertain. “I guess we could explore a little. You know, I don’t really know much about Nicodranas. Apart from what I’ve heard, of course. Man, I’ve heard some things.”

Beau grins. The eavesdropping is definitely one of her favorite parts of staying in the Chateau with Jester. Sometimes they’ll have dinner in Jester’s hidden room, lay on their backs behind the stained glass window with some food and listen to the conversations people have below in the main hall. Beau has so much random blackmail material now, which is always good to have.

“Then let’s go. Let’s just get out of here for a bit,” Beau says. She holds out her hand and Jester takes it, like they’re going to jump off a cliff together and not just, you know, walk out onto the street. It still seems appropriate. 

For some reason, it feels like something they have to be brave for, together.

Jester disguises herself so that they don’t have to worry about being seen on the way out. As soon as they’re out of view, she drops her disguise and stretches her arms out, and spins.

Beau watches her with a grin, feeling equally giddy. It’s good to be out on the streets, to feel wind on her face. Nicodranas is lit up for them, colored lanterns and moonlight and open doorways glowing warmly from inside.

“You know,” Jester says, and spins back around to face Beau so that she’s walking backwards, “I heard a sailor once, at the Chateau, say that no matter how many ports she’d been to, Nicodranas was her favoritest.” 

“Sailors know all the best spots,” Beau says, nodding.

“She said there was a place,” Jester says, voice hushed, “where you could make a fortune with gambling. That’s why she was so rich, for a sailor. The Drowned Lantern. I always wanted to go there.”

Beau would follow Jester anywhere, if she asked. She says, “Then I guess we have to find this place.”

Which is how they end up in the seediest tavern Beau has been to in a long time. Or maybe it just seems seedy because they just came from the Lavish Chateau, and this is definitely not the Lavish Chateau. It’s thick with sailors, the air is hazy with sweet-smelling smoke, and it’s loud enough that Beau has to lean in close to Jester to tell her to grab some seats.

She muscles her way to the bar and orders an ale for herself and a glass of milk for Jester. The trick to ordering a glass of milk at a bar, she’s found, is to do it with such conviction that the bartender doesn’t immediately laugh in your face. Still, it takes a while for him to come back, holding a glass of milk with an air of skepticism.

By the time she makes it back to Jester, Jester has already joined a game of dice. She passes Jester her glass of milk and settles next to her to watch Jester absolutely destroy a table of weathered, wind-beaten sailors. Beau is worried, for a second, that there’s going to be a fight, but instead they guffaw with laughter and slap Jester good-naturedly on her shoulder.

“Wow, they were _so nice_ , huh Beau?” Jester says, as she pours her earnings into her purse.

“Yeah. Boy, that sailor was not kidding, was she?” Beau says. “You really made a solid profit.”

“I just got lucky,” Jester says, and then looks very satisfied in a way that makes Beau think she _definitely_ cheated.

They sit and drink and talk, and it’s nice. It’s nice just to do this, together. They’re sitting by the window, and from here they can see the moonlit docks, people going by on the lantern-lit streets. 

“Is this a date?” Jester asks.

“What?” Beau says, startled. She’s on her third ale, and for a moment, she thinks that Jester has somehow realized that Beau has feelings for her. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, because those people are really on a date. Look,” Jester says, and tilts her head at a couple in the shadowed corner near them. A half-orc woman and an elven woman, both sailors, although Beau can’t make out any more of their features by how closely they’re entwined. The elf is in the half-orc’s lap, and the half-orc’s hand is up her skirt. 

Judging by the way the elf is rocking back and forth, her eyes glazed-over and her mouth open, Beau can guess pretty well what the half-orc’s hand is doing there. It’s not like they’re out in the open, they _are_ kind of hidden in that alcove. But _still_.

“Jester, you’re staring,” Beau whispers.

Jester continues to stare. “They’re just so — wow, they’re really doing it, huh?”

“Yeah, they really are,” Beau says, and makes herself stare out of the window. Beau figures growing up in a place like the Chateau with the Ruby of the Sea as your mother gives you different reservations when it came to sex, but, fuck, Jester isn’t even _looking away_.

“If this were a date, I guess I would be in your lap right now, huh?” Jester says absentmindedly.

“I — what do you — is—.” Beau clears her throat. “Do you _want_ this to be a date?”

Jester turns away from the couple, finally. “No,” she says loudly. “No. _No_ , Beau. Of course not. No, I just wanted to know what would happen if we were. I’ve never been on one, but I’ve _read_ about it of course.”

“Right. Of course,” Beau says, and wishes abruptly for a fourth ale, or maybe for someone to throw her into the sea. “I mean, I don’t think it would go like that.” Beau jerks her head to the couple. “You have to be pretty ballsy to do it like they’re doing it, in front of everyone. I don’t know, a date is just — sometimes it’s just two people talking? That’s all it has to be.” 

Fuck. how did they even get on this topic?

“So this _could_ be a date?” Jester says.

“It could, I mean technically. But usually you, you know, agree to that beforehand?” Beau says, weakly.

“Oh,” Jester says, kind of quietly, and Beau is much too drunk to know if she’s said something wrong or not. Knowing herself, she probably has.

But then on the way back to the Chateau, Jester takes her hand and lets her lean on her shoulder, so maybe not.

  
  
  


The next morning, Beau wakes up to find Jester sitting in the windowsill, her skirts tucked up around her knees.

“Hey,” Beau says, and she sees Jester take a deep breath and put on a tired smile.

“Morning, Beau,” Jester says. “I just sent a message to Caleb.”

Beau sits up, scared that something has happened. “What’s the matter? Are they okay?”

Jester shakes her head. “No, they’re all right, although apparently Fjord almost got eaten by a bear or something. Caleb said they’re running late. They need a few more days before they can come back to get us.”

“Oh,” Beau says, subsiding. “That’s not… that’s fine, right?” Is Jester anxious about Fjord? Is that why she’s acting weird? 

“Yeah, of course it’s fine, Beau. I get to spend more time here, that means,” Jester says, with a very convincing laugh, and Beau wonders if she’s just imagined that melancholy in her eyes before. Jester hops down from the windowsill. “Come on, let’s go get breakfast, and then we can paint some more.”

Painting on the roof, however, turns out to be a bust. Over the night, thick clouds rolled in. It begins to rain heavily during breakfast.

Jester’s shoulders slump when she sees this, that melancholy back in her eyes. Beau definitely was not imagining it earlier. She puts her hand on Jester’s shoulder.

“We can do something else,” Beau says, casting around for an idea. In a moment of desperation, she remembers Jester’s sketches, and says, “You could draw me. That could be fun, right?”

Jester turns to look at her with surprise, and Beau is scared for a moment that she knows she snooped in her sketchbook. “You’d let me do that?” she asks. “You won’t get bored?”

Beau thinks about it. The idea of sitting there while Jester draws her in the same detail as she saw in her sketches… her heart starts to pound a little faster. She wonders, for a second, if she’s made a mistake suggesting this.

“No, I,” she clears her throat, “definitely won’t get bored.” Which is the truth.

It takes them a while to figure out how to start. Jester has Beau sit in the windowsill, her chin tucked in her hand, and Beau feels kind of stupid at first, until Jester shows her what she’s drawn. It’s the way she’s drawn her face, she thinks. Beau always worries that she looks unfriendly, bitchy, unapproachable. But the expression Jester’s drawn on her looks almost pensive, something tranquil about it.

“Is it good?” Jester says.

“Yeah,” Beau says. And then, because she wants to see more, she asks, “Want to do another?”

Jester grows bolder in positioning Beau where she wants her. She has Beau sit in her meditative pose on the floor, her legs crossed one on top of each other, draws her like that. Jester was so quick to suggest it that Beau wonders if maybe she’s been thinking of drawing her like that for a while. It’s a dumb thought, but somehow Beau’s mind won’t stop turning it over and over.

They do a few more —- Beau does a few defensive forms, adapting them so that her injured arm remains tucked against her side, out of view. Then, Jester has Beau sit on the floor and unbind her hair. She does it clumsily with her left hand, while Jester watches. 

Something about the silence, then, makes Beau wonder, just a little bit. Her hair falls loose around her shoulders, and she drops her hand back down to her lap. Jester’s eyes seem to follow this movement with an unusual sharpness, like she wants to draw that too.

“Hmm, no, not like that,” Jester says. She puts her sketchbook down on the floor and comes over to Beau. She reaches out and begins to comb her fingers through Beau’s hair, parting it to the other side so that the shaved part of Beau’s head is more visible, arranges it so that it falls around her face in a certain way.

Beau holds very still, and tries not to look too obviously like she’s had this fantasy before. She wishes desperately that she’d thought to wash her hair today.

Jester’s quiet for a moment as she considers Beau, her head tilted. Then she reaches out and drags her fingers heavy across the shaved part of Beau’s head, all the way to the nape. The sensation is so unexpected that Beau can’t help but gasp, her back straightening on reflex, which startles them both.

Jester draws away. “You should really comb your hair more often, Beau,” Jester says, but she leaves her hair alone after that, and begins to draw. 

Beau’s never really thought much of her hair. It’s an unimpressive color, it gets annoying knots in it, it’s a pain to wash. She mostly just ties it up out of the way and forgets about it until it starts to smell. But the way Jester’s drawn it — tangles of it framing her face, errant wisps curling against her neck, the soft fuzz of her undercut — it looks beautiful. Beau looks up from the sketch and frowns.

“You’re making this up, Jes,” Beau jokes. “There’s no way I look like this. I’ve seen a mirror, you know.”

“I’m _not_ ,” Jester says, sounding offended that Beau would even suggest such a thing. She snatches the sketch back from Beau. “Mirrors don’t matter at all. This is how _I_ see you, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Beau says, and doesn’t know what else to say. If she thought about it too hard, she’d probably lose her shit. That’s pretty normal when it comes to her with Jester, though.

“Can we try one more?” Jester says.

Beau snorts. “Pretty sure you’ve drawn me every single way you possibly could.”

But Jester just chews her lip. “Could I — would you let me draw your tattoo?” 

“Oh. No,” Beau says immediately, without thinking.

“Oh,” Jester says, looking disappointed. “Oh, okay. Well, you don’t have to, of course. That’s okay.”

“I—” Beau considers it. She considers saying yes. She would sit with her back to Jester and draw her shirt over her head and let Jester sit there and _look_ at her like she’s been looking at her this entire time. Quietly and deliberately, her gaze dragging over every part of her and putting it to paper.

She can’t bear it. She wouldn’t be able to bear it. Beau’s been through hell for this crush already and she’s content to keep going through hell for it without making it _worse_.

She mumbles something about needing fresh air, and leaves. Goes down to the courtyard and stands in the middle of it, letting cool rain fall across her flushed-red face.

  
  
  


When she comes back, an hour has passed, Beau’s made a decision, and Jester is sitting on the bed drawing in her sketchbook, her brow furrowed. She looks up when Beau comes in, and _glares_ at her, and Beau just drips rainwater in the doorway and tries to figure out how to begin.

“Where have you been, Beau?” Jester says angrily. “You got your bandages all wet. I’m going to have to change them, you know.” She gets up and marches to her dresser to pull out the roll of bandages. She slams the drawer shut hard enough for the whole thing to rattle.

“Listen, that can wait,” Beau says. “I have to tell you something first.”

Jester ignores this, however. She takes Beau by her uninjured arm and drags her to the bed to sit down.

“Why’d you go outside in the rain anyway?” Jester says. She stands over Beau and unwinds her sodden bandages. She does it more briskly than gently, and Beau grits her teeth a bit when Jester accidentally presses too hard on a tender spot.

“I had to — look, can you just let me say something, Jes?” Beau says.

Jester doesn’t reply. She tosses away the wet bandage and goes to replace it with a fresh one, but Beau grabs her hand and keeps it away.

“Stop it, Beau,” Jester says, struggling against her grip. Beau doesn’t usually win against Jester in a test of muscle but she can tell Jester isn’t really giving it all her strength.

“Jester,” she says. “I’m in love with you.”

Jester looks at her then, the anger falling away, her eyes going wide. “No, you aren’t,” she says. “ _I_ am.”

Beau blinks. “Wait, what?”

“ _I’m_ in love with you,” Jester says. Her cheeks are turning a wild violet color. Beau’s absolutely obsessed with it. “I’ve been in love with you.”

Beau shakes her head, as if it would help to jumpstart her brain, which has decided to fail at this very crucial moment. “You’re in love with me,” she repeats. “Seriously? You are?”

“I thought — I thought you liked Yasha. Or, or Reani. Or Keg. I thought you liked _them_.” Jester says, her voice going a little high, her words coming faster and faster.

Beau can’t find the words, so she stops looking for them. She reaches up and pulls Jester in by the back of her neck and kisses her, a quick, soft press.

Jester begins to laugh against her lips, a sort of stunned, delighted laugh.

“You kissed me,” Jester says, her lips still brushing against Beau’s. Beau can’t _breathe_ right now. She waits until Jester’s laughter subsides into small, hiccupping giggles, and then Beau tilts her head and Jester is _kissing her_.

Holy fuck. 

Holy _fuck_. Jester pushes up against her, licks greedily into Beau’s mouth, her hand tilting Beau’s head up. Jester’s teeth pull against Beau’s lower lip, and they’re _sharp_ , sharper than Beau thought they would be, even though she’s dreamed about this, even though she’s gotten herself off imagining Jester’s sharp teeth on her skin. Jester sucks at her lip and Beau can’t fucking get enough of it, just pulls Jester into her lap and makes a low noise of encouragement.

“You know you’re still soaked, right?” Jester asks. “How _long_ were you _outside_?”

Beau grins a little sheepishly into the side of Jester’s neck. “Listen,” she says. “I had a lot to think about, okay? I didn’t know you fucking had feelings for me. That would have made this so much easier.”

Jester winds a hand into Beau’s very wet hair and pulls Beau away so that she can look into Beau’s face (which, by the way is _super_ hot, Jester should pull her by her hair more often). “Beau, is this the reason why you wouldn’t let me draw your tattoo?” she asks, something like consternation in her voice now.

“Well, yeah,” Beau says, wishing she could hide her face again, but Jester still has a firm hold of her. “I wasn’t going to — you were going to ask me to take my _shirt_ off, and I would have done it, and then — Jester, you know how hard it was to sit there and let you draw me and not look like I wasn’t the most turned on I’ve ever been?”

“Oh,” Jester says, one exhale going out of her all at once.

“Yeah,” Beau says, and this time Jester lets her put her face back into the crook of Jester’s neck again. Jester pets a hand through her hair until all of Beau’s bones become molten liquid, one by one.

“You’re cold all over,” Jester says quietly. “Get undressed and I will put a new bandage around your arm.”

  
  
  


Beau’s undressed in front of Jester so many times, and somehow this is different. Jester watches her with heat in her eyes, and it’s so fucking distracting that Beau trips on her pants a little on the way out of them. She kicks all her clothes into a soggy pile by the fire and, naked, gets into bed, under the blankets, because it’s _cold_.

She resurfaces so that Jester can wrap her arm.

“It’s almost better,” Beau says, and it’s true. There are a few broken spots remaining along her upper arm, but her skin is growing back nicely, and she’s got almost her full movement back. “You did a good job on it, Jes.”

“Thanks,” Jester says, preening a little. She ties off the wrapping, puts away the roll of bandages, and then swoops down for a kiss. Her hand reaches below the covers to stroke down Beau’s side, to the jut of her hip, and then back up again. Beau takes a quick sharp breath.

“If you don’t get undressed,” she says desperately, “ _I’ll_ get dressed.”

“Okay, okay, keep your hat on,” Jester says, and she begins unlacing her dress. Beau watches with her mouth hanging open, aware that she probably looks stupid right now, but she can’t help it. Jester is _beautiful_.

She doesn’t realize she’s said it out loud until Jester laughs, delighted by it, and then Beau’s glad she didn’t keep it to herself. She kisses Jester while she’s still laughing, and Jester goes quiet immediately and licks into her mouth like she was just waiting for it.

And then Jester gets that look on her face. Beau recognizes it from earlier, when Jester had been trying to figure out just where to put Beau so that she could draw her. Beau’s mouth goes dry now, just like it had then.

“Will you let me try something?” Jester says.

“Yes,” Beau says without hesitation. She wants to be led through worlds with Jester.

Jester takes both of Beau’s wrists in her hands and presses them back onto the mattress, putting her weight on them so that Beau is pinned down completely.

“Oh, fuck,” Beau says. She arches up against Jester, but Jester is _strong_ and keeps her in place. Jester’s smile widens. 

She’s not complaining. From here, Beau has a good view of, well, everything — Jester’s breasts hanging heavy and full, the muscles of her shoulders working as she keeps Beau in place, the silver lightning stretch marks across Jester’s belly.

“I want you to keep your hands here, okay?” Jester says. Beau nods helplessly, and watches as Jester kisses down her collarbone, between her breasts. She shifts so that one hand holds Beau’s wrists and the other trails along the curve of Beau’s breast, playing with her nipple, running the calloused pad of her thumb across it until Beau is panting and twisting. 

Fuck, she’s already _throbbing_. It feels like her heart is trying to beat its way out of her cunt.

“I’ve been wanting to do this,” Jester says, her voice gone low and hushed, and Beau swears she blacks out a little, just from the idea of Jester _wanting_ her, like Beau has wanted her. 

When Jester finally gets her hand between Beau’s legs, Beau is so slippery and wet that she has to close her eyes for a moment at the absolutely _obscene_ noise it makes when Jester slips her fingers in. 

“Gods,” she says, driven out of her mind with it. “ _Gods_.” 

“Which gods?” Jester asks, laughing, even as she keeps _doing that_ with her fingers. “The Traveler better be one of them.”

“The Traveler and Ioun and — ohfuck _rightthere_ — and Pelor and the fucking Wildmother and, I don’t know, Jes, all of them” She can’t remember any more but she invokes them anyway, all of them at once. She didn’t know someone could be fucked into finding religion until now, but maybe this is what happens when you sleep with a cleric.

When Beau comes, Jester laughs again. Jester laughs a lot during sex, Beau is realizing, and when she’s collapsed back onto the bed, she laughs too, breathless and disbelieving.

“Your turn,” Beau says, and just to see, draws her thigh between Jester’s leg and _presses_.

Jester’s mouth opens in surprise, and her legs squeeze reflexively around Beau’s thigh. She lets out a tight, shuddering moan and Beau can fucking _feel_ how wet she is. Jester bends down to kiss Beau, panting across Beau’s lips as she continues to rock back and forth against Beau’s thigh. Beau wonders if Jester could get off just like this and the thought drives her _insane_.

“Let me,” Beau says. Jester releases her wrists and Beau wastes no time in sliding her hands down Jester’s back and grabbing her hips, her fingers pressing into the soft flesh of Jester’s ass. She helps Jester grind against her leg, presses her thigh up in time to the rhythm of it, until Jester throws her head back and groans.

“I need,” Jester says, her voice breaking. “Beau, I need you to—”.

“I got you,” Beau says, her voice rough, and gets her fingers between Jester’s legs to find her clit.

Beau feels it when Jester comes — the tightening of her legs around Beau’s thigh, the sudden curve of her spine, the way Jester’s eyes go unseeing and knowing all at once.

Jester’s barely caught her breath when she says, “Can we try one more?”

  
  
  


Beau’s lying on her belly, Jester half on top of her, their limbs pressed together. Beau is absolutely fucked-out and she can’t stop smiling. She finds Jester’s arm and follows it to her hand and laces their fingers together, floored by the simplicity of being able to touch Jester how she wants without feeling the guilt that she’s grown so used to.

She can’t believe they waited this long.

Jester looks at their hands with a dazed, sleepy smile, and then she reaches under her pillow for her sketchbook. She draws their interlocked hands without letting go of Beau, and when this is done, she tears the page out of her sketchbook and gives it to Beau to keep.

Beau does.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/star_strung).


End file.
